Truth, No Matter the Power: Controversial Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei’s only fear is silence

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Your criticisms of the Olympic Games are not reported in the official media, but your blog remains online. What is the purpose of your blog?

I do my blog because this is the only possible channel through which a person can express a personal opinion in China. No newspaper, magazine, or television channel would ever present your argument or ideas. I am the most interviewed person in China, even domestically, and yet even if I say something it cannot be published here. So I am talking to myself—it is ridiculous. I felt that a blog might be a good way to create one forum in which to open one’s mind. Yet every time I sit to write I still hesitate: Should I do it? What will the consequences be?

I retain a simple premise in mind: My blog is an extension of my thinking—why should I deform my thinking simply because I live under a government that espouses an ideology I believe to be totally against humanity? And this so-called communist ideology is totally against humanity. Over decades, many generations of people in this nation have been hurt by this: Many are dead, many have disappeared, and many have been damaged, whether they are conscious of this reality or not. So my position is not just one person’s strange idea—these are our lives and we live in this part of the world. People [elsewhere] are not going to take a position—they have other concerns. So for me this is not a responsibility: It is part of life. If you live in self-punishment or self-imposed ignorance or lack of self-awareness, it genuinely diminishes your existence. Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.

What kinds of political reform do you think China needs?

We need a very simple solution. Everything is so complicated and tangled together, so entrenched in history, so deep, heavy, and difficult to understand; we just need to cut though the Gordian knot. We live in modern times and we possess possibilities that were unavailable to others before. We no longer have the same East-West, communist-capitalist conflicts—these foundations are no longer in place.

The basic value of contemporary thought has to be established in China. We need to create a sense of right and wrong; to learn to face ourselves and our history; to discuss what kind of nation and what kind of government we should create. These are essential questions and they need to be addressed. Without this, no solution can ever really reach the real root problem.

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